Daju

The Daju languages form a branch of the Eastern Sudanic group within the Nilo-Saharan family, spoken in scattered pockets across Darfur and Kordofan in Sudan and Wadai in Chad. They fall into western and eastern branches.

Daju tradition traces the people to the Nile valley, from which they moved west after the Aksumite sack of Meroe in the fourth century; by the twelfth century a Daju kingdom had arisen in the Marrah Mountains of Darfur. About 1400 the Egyptian writer al-Maqrizi described this kingdom, which he called Taju, as powerful and lying between Kanem and the Nile states.

In the fourteenth century the Tunjur overran the Daju dynasty: the king fled west to Dar Sila in Chad with part of his people, while other groups migrated east into Kordofan, leaving the related languages separated in isolated pockets.